E-Mail Configuration

Email services are offered to students, faculty and staff of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.The service includes automatic backups of mail stored on our servers, support for secure protocols for sending and retrieving mail, client configuration help, and spam-filtering. General email configuration settings are listed below.

SMTP is the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, the standard under which mail is transported on the Internet. Many applications that generate outgoing mail hand it off to an SMTP server that will handle the sometimes complex task of resolving addresses and transporting messages to the destination.

SEND.LDEO.COLUMBIA.EDU

The main SMTP server cluster is send.ldeo.columbia.edu. If you install a mail program on your computer, you can configure send.ldeo.columbia.edu as the SMTP server. Your mail program will send all outbound mail to send.ldeo.columbia.edu and then send.ldeo.columbia.edu will take care of routing your messages to their destinations.

Send.ldeo.columbia.edu requires SMTP authentication. The email program you use will do this for you. Send.ldeo.columbia.edu requires either TLS encryption (port 587) or SSL encryption (port 465). TLS to port 587 is preferred. If you are connected through an off-campus service provider you may need to use port 587 to reach send.ldeo.columbia.edu.

INCOMING MAIL SERVER

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. It is a method of accessing electronic mail that are kept on a mail server. In other words, it permits a "client" email program to access remote message stores as if they were local. For example, email stored on an IMAP server can be manipulated from a desktop computer at home, a workstation at the office, and a notebook computer while traveling, without the need to transfer messages or files back and forth between these computers.

POP stands for Post Office Protocol, and it is another method for accessing email. POP allows your mail program to talk to the email server and then download all of the messages each time you connect. One of the advantages of POP is the ability to download all of your messages onto a local computer.

MAIL.LDEO.COLUMBIA.EDU

Mail.ldeo.columbia.edu requires password authentication. The email program you use will do this for you mail.columbia.edu requires either TLS encryption (port 143) or SSL encryption (port 993).

You must login to use this service. The use of this system is limited exclusively to users valid
Lamont account. For help contact the Computer Support Group at request@ldeo.columbia.edu

NOTES:

1) If you are offsite, your ISP may block the SMTP ports above. In that case try TLS on port 587. This may or may not work, depending on the ISP.
2) You must use one of TLS or SSL -- either encrypts your connection